The small group of Fae slowly stopped circling. Sergeant Epard was the first to be approached, by a dark brown female Fae with black ear tufts and a distinctive half-black tail. Jim was pretty sure it was Ryft, whom he’d met upon returning to New Warsaw.
The Fae stood a short distance from where Epard sat and examined her with big blue-on-blue eyes. Then Epard leaned forward and held out her hand. Ryft reached out a hand, and the two touched. Both of them gave a little gasp, and Epard’s eyes went wide.
“Match,
Ryft jumped into Epard’s lap and touched her face. The woman responded by stroking Ryft’s ears. The Fae’s coo of appreciation was evident even from several meters away. The other Humans, including the Horsemen off to the side, spontaneously applauded. Epard looked up in surprise, evidently forgetting there were witnesses. She blushed slightly, and Jim smiled. He knew how intimate that bond felt and was happy for her.
One down, five to go, he thought. He watched how the Fae—or rather Dusman—reacted to the bonding. Splunk was observing keenly, Sly seemed attentive but not engaged, while Dante was watching with a scowl of obvious distaste. As time went on, some of the Dusman would leave, and new ones appeared. Nobody seemed to notice the parade of new arrivals except him.
One of the newest to arrive stopped in front of Ensign Fenn. A male Dusman with a rich brown-furred body and white limbs and ears. Fenn reached out, like Epard had done, and the Dusman touched the offered hand. Another gasp, and another bond was created.
This new one didn’t seem to speak English, like Splunk when Jim first met her. Fenn gave him a name. “How about Peanut?” he offered. The Dusman cocked his head then chirped in appreciation.
Next, a female, all-white with speckles, bonded with Sergeant Kleve. She named her Sandy. Then a gray male with a black nose and a white tail tuft joined Sergeant Thompson and was dubbed Shadow. Next, a white female with a single brown ear and tail tip named Aura bonded with Sergeant Mays.
That left Corporal Curran, which caught Jim by surprise. He’d been around the Dusman more than anyone in the group, so Jim thought he’d be the first. Yet somehow it appeared that wasn’t the case.
Curran looked around in confusion, unsure what was going on. The other five were all holding and talking to their new partners, most in broken English. Jim had a half smile on his face, knowing they would be hearing the strange alien words with ear and mind, likely not realizing it.
Then Curran seemed to see something and locked his attention on it. The other Dusman all moved away from one of their number, who looked both ways at those moving back.
The gray-furred male with white ear tips and one white hand glared, clenching his robotic hand. “Entropy,” he cursed. “You can’t be serious.”
Jim looked up at Splunk who had her hand over her mouth in either shock or amusement. She saw Jim and took her hand away for him to see the huge smile on her face.
Dante said something in his own language to Sly who replied in kind. As Splunk learned English so quickly, Jim never had the chance to study Dusman well enough to learn more than a few of her common special words. He did hear the word Pree, which he knew was either anger or regret. It was pretty obvious Dante did not approve of what was happening.
“What’s going on?” Curran asked Jim.
“It’s complicated,” Jim said. How could he explain to him that the Dusman form of government involved a “for” and “against” each issue as well as a Kroof, or arbiter. Or that Dante was against the Dusman even being there.
After a few moments of argument, Dante sighed and walked over to Curran, looking up at the Human with his one good eye in an unmistakable glare. He sighed again and held up his non-cybernetic hand. Curran reached out, and they touched. The bond was formed. Dante didn’t jump up for a petting session like the others, but he did climb up on Curran’s shoulder.
It was done.
“Very well,” Jim said. “Welcome to the Raknar Corps. If you’ll follow me, we’ll head for the docking bay to catch a shuttle over to Upsilon 4 and get started right away.” The six got up, their Dusman either riding on their shoulders or being carried by them. As they went by Jim, Dante gave him a sour look, and Jim was hard pressed not to laugh.
Nigel, Sansar, and Alexis all stood by the door, nodding to each of their troopers as they exited, and to the others as well. Eventually only Jim and Splunk were left with them.
“Thank you for letting us see that,” Sansar said. “It was amazing.” Sansar’s brown eyes were shinning with unspoken questions.
“Yes, most…interesting,” Nigel said, obviously not as amazed, though very curious.
“Those first contacts,” Alexis said. “Was that a bonding?”
“Yes,” Jim said. “I don’t remember mine with Splunk. I was unconscious.”
“I see,” she said. “Well, you have a lot of work and not much time.”
“Yes, true. Thanks for helping make this happen. I think we have a much better chance on Earth with them. If the Merc Guild used Canavar against us on Talus…”
“Who knows what they might try on Earth,” Nigel finished for him. Jim nodded in agreement. Nigel patted Jim on the shoulder as he walked out. The other two did the same, then he was alone. Only, he wasn’t. Behind him two dozen Dusman sat around the area where the six new Raknar drivers were created.
Jim turned to face them. Sly was in the middle of the group, and they were all watching him. “Keep up the illusion,” Sly said. “Even though Dante has bonded, it doesn’t mean he’s not formed a consensus.”
“They deserve to know,” Jim said. “This is getting too big for me.” He pointed back out the door. “Those six men and women are volunteering their lives; haven’t they earned the truth?”
Sly shook his head. “No, not yet they haven’t. Besides, they may figure it out themselves. All their partners have been counseled on keeping the illusion as well. You must follow our wishes.”
“Why?” Jim demanded. “Because you are the Dusman?”
“No, because deep down, you know we’re right.”
Jim grunted and turned to go, then stopped. “If you went into hiding after the Great War, who created the Union?”
Sly looked at him, shook his head, and led the other Fae out of the conference room. Jim glanced at Splunk on his shoulder, a questioning look on his face. She also shook her head.
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell?” Jim asked.
“There are some things we don’t entirely understand.
It was the first time anything Splunk told him had made him scared.
* * *
Jim hadn’t thought a month could pass so quickly. At first he was concerned that he’d have a hard time concentrating while keeping the Dusman’s secret. It turned out he was far too busy to worry about such a seemingly mundane concern.
The first two days were spent moving the six new drivers into Upsilon 4 and letting them become accustomed to their partners. He’d planned to explain to them that their new partners were at least partly telepathic. That turned out to be unnecessary.
“Does Splunk talk to you with her mind, too?” Sergeant Epard asked Jim the first afternoon. Their training was taking place in a barracks area of Upsilon 4 adjacent to the Raknar work area. Immediately all the others looked up and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said, “but it took me a lot longer to figure it out.” The Dusman were in a little confab at one end of the table, eating from a tray piled high with various sausages, their favorite food.
“You only had the one,” Ensign Fenn said. “When they’re in a group, and you’re all talking together it’s easier to tell.”
While they all agreed, it still made Jim feel a little like an idiot. Nobody else made any note of it, and Jim took advantage of the mealtime to use a Tri-V to go over the history of his explorations into the Raknar’s function. Unfortunately, some of the recordings involved showing his former girlfriend turned traitor, Captain Adriann
e McKenzie.
The montage continued, showing various Raknar systems and their understanding of them, from the early belief that the glowing slime in the cockpit was an infection, to the realization it was part of the control system. A living entity in itself, possessing conductive qualities bordering on superconductivity as well as other undetermined ones.
“The joints are interesting,” Jim said after taking a bite of sandwich. The Tri-V changed to show a knee joint disassembled. “Obviously there’s no metal that can handle the stress of a thousand tons’ force, so the designers got around that with magnetic joints.” The image showed the joint functioning, two super-powerful magnetic fields keeping them from touching and another keeping them from separating. “It’s brilliant, actually.”
“Uses a lot of power,” Ensign Fenn said. His dossier said he was a shuttle maintenance technician who’d served on Pegasus. He’d know about such things—a useful skill in his new endeavor. However, he possessed even fewer combat skills than Sergeant Epard.
“Yes,” Jim agreed, “though maybe not as much as you’d think. The Raknars make extensive use of superconducting power systems and carefully maintain optimal power flow to essential systems. Very little is wasted.”
“You ran one of those on batteries?” Sergeant Mays asked.
Jim nodded. “Yes, for a little over five minutes. However, it didn’t have any of the offensive systems we do now, which is what uses the vast majority of the power.” He showed the power distribution network. Two fusion plants were centered in the middle of the chest, uncomfortably close to the cockpit. Fenn whistled. Jim nodded again. “The heart of the Raknar, dual five-terawatt pumped-fusion power plants.”
“They’re so small,” Fenn observed.
“Very small,” Jim agreed. “Too small for us to make. The ones secured by Sinclair’s Scorpions as replacements are only three terawatts. I think the KzSha who owned them before I did sold the power plants for profit.” He shrugged. “The two smaller ones should suffice.”
“What does that thing need ten terawatts of power for?” Sergeant Kleve asked.
Jim showed them the array of weapons the Raknar was capable of using, as well as how it flew.
“Oh,” Kleve said, looking abashed.
“We’ve also added two micro-shield generators to each of our seven Raknar,” Jim said. “These function similarly to how CASPer pilots use their laser shields. As Ensign Fenn is familiar, ship’s shields are highly dependent on fusion power to absorb damage. They also often have issues in atmosphere. These were obtained from Bjorn’s Berserkers and field tested on tanks. The Fae are certain they’ve integrated them into the Raknar, and, as I discovered when the battleship gun was added to Dash, the Raknar itself is adept at utilizing new weaponry, even if it wasn’t designed for the mecha.”
The Tri-V showed a simulation of a Raknar crouching, holding up its left arm with the shield activated as an orbital beam weapon hit the shield. They were all quiet as they watched, nobody wanting to think about that scenario.
“Now,” Jim said, “you can never forget these machines made entire worlds uninhabitable while fighting the Canavar. It was a war of cataclysmic scale, and these were the principle weapons of destruction. It might have been a good war—one to stop terror weapons, but who can say?” He glanced at the Dusman sitting on the table talking among themselves. He thought they were all occupied, but he saw Dante watching him with that single bright blue-on-blue eye, unblinking.
“We won’t forget,” Epard said, and the others nodded.
“You say that now,” he said, “but just you wait.”
The next two days were busy with simulator runs. The Dusman had built the sims while Jim was fighting at Talus. He was past being surprised at what they could accomplish, especially considering who they were. The galaxy was full of remnants of the Dusman’s technology. Was it all designed by them, or did they have help?
Each of the new Raknar drivers experienced Akee for the first time with their partners. Just like it had been for Jim, they all described a feeling of massively expanded consciousness and the sense they could accomplish anything. “You’ll feel invulnerable,” Jim warned them, then showed a still of the medical crew removing him from the cockpit of Dash, blood pouring from his chest. “You aren’t.” The day ended on a somber note.
The following day they mounted their Raknars for the first time, spending their time going over the interior spaces and familiarizing themselves with the layout. In his absence, the Dusman had installed survival systems meant for Humans, rather than Lumar. The trainees were all amazed at how much open space there was.
“The Raknar were designed for a lot of different missions,” Jim explained. “Thus they were built overly large and spacious. Equipment for special missions, consumables for long duration missions, et cetera,” he said, not knowing himself what “et cetera” might be. “The extra space also acts to buffer weapons fire,” Jim added. “Most weapons used against Raknar are designed to penetrate armor and detonate, the extra internal gaps between layers of armor help defeat that. They’re damned hard to stop.”
* * *
A day later they were in space for the first time.
Ensign Fenn, with no CASPer experience, was the most nervous. Jim did his best to calm his fears. “The Raknar does all the hard work,” he explained. “As you felt when you were Akee, the knowledge is there already.”
“But where does it come from?” Fenn asked.
“Inside the Raknar,
Jim/Splunk went out first, gently flying Dash out through the huge Raknar access bay into space. The other six flew out one at a time, all taking their time. Once they were floating a kilometer from Upsilon 4, Jim/Spunk spoke to them.
“Follow me,” they said. “This will be fun.”
They used their built-in fusion torches to accelerate at ten Gs toward the nearest part of the debris field which surrounded Home. The others fell into rough formation behind.
“Let the experience fill you,” Jim/Splunk said to them. “You will know what you can and can’t do.” They accelerated to fifteen Gs and began to maneuver with arm jets around debris, spinning for orientation, and renewing main torch power as necessary.
Behind them, Thompson/Shadow overcompensated and hit a multi-ton piece of debris. The Raknar exploded through it in a shower of meteoric debris. They cursed over the radio.
“Relax!” Jim/Splunk said. “You’re fighting it.”
“It is not doing what I say,” Thompson/Shadow complained.
“You are trying to tell it what to do, instead of being it,” Jim/Splunk said.
Slowly, each of the Humans began to master being Akee with their partner and the Raknar. After four hours in space, they returned. Only when Jim was no longer Akee with Splunk was he able to concentrate on the mundane data and review how things really went. He’d equipped Dash with recording gear to monitor what happened; that way, he didn’t have to rely on Jim/Splunk’s memories; those tended to be less subjective.
Reviewing the recordings, he was surprised to find Fenn/Peanut to be the most natural working with their Raknar. The lack of previous mecha experience appeared to be working in their favor. I guess that makes a sort of sense, he decided. Subsequent flights over the next three days confirmed that, and by the end of that time, they were all performing well. Jim/Splunk benefitted from the extra flight time as well.
“How are we able to take such extreme Gs when Akee?” Corporal Curran asked.
“The Cood,” Dante said. “Goo, as he calls it,” he added, pointing at Jim. “It protects us, and more.”
And more, Jim thought, remembering how he hadn’t known he was critically injured on Talus until after they’d broken the Akee. Would the Raknar have allowed him to die if the fight had continued?
Now that they were doing well in flight, Jim moved onto the last stage—ground combat. He’d wanted to use Home. The planet had a lower gravity than Earth, but its atmosphere was thicker.
Colder too. It would have been fine, but Alexis said under no circumstances could Jim fly giant, fusion torch-powered mecha to their planet.
Instead he got the use of a dwarf planet named Hades, located several light minutes further out-system than Home. It was a nasty ice ball with a rather thin atmosphere and only a quarter of a G, but Alexis didn’t care if they made a mess of it. In the end, that was fine, as it proved useful in creating a more complete simulated battle. All seven of them were loaded on a Hussars transport and flown out to the planet.
* * *
Hades Orbit, New Warsaw System
Jim took an entire week to run drills. First, they practiced detaching from the transport and flying into Hades’ orbit. Next, they did it under simulated fire. Then he graduated them to combat drops.
They ended up doing six combat drops onto various terrain. By the end, they still struggled to come down in a coherent formation, but Jim decided it wasn’t going to get any better in the time they had left, so he spent the last week simulating Canavar attacks and dealing with armored ground units.
Enemy merc units on Earth wouldn’t be a threat to the Raknar; only armor, defensive fortifications, or air power would be dangerous to them. That was also the hardest to simulate because he had no idea what Peepo would be willing to do. Were orbital bombardments or nukes off the table? He finally decided he had no choice but to concede the Hussars would maintain space superiority. Without it, they would be in big trouble.
* * *
Winged Hussars Prime Base, New Warsaw System
“They’re as ready as they can be,” Jim said while reporting to the Horsemen back on Prime Base, twenty-nine days after the six recruits met their partners.
“Then it’s time to finalize our attack on Earth,” Alexis said.
They all nodded in agreement.
“Direct assault is our best option,” Alexis noted as she switched the Tri-V over the four-pointed golden table to display the Sol system. Around Earth were the key points—the emergence point, stargate, Luna’s orbit, defensive platforms, and orbital installations. The Hussars fleet appeared at the emergence point and immediately moved toward Earth. “We’ll come through with two kilometers per second of velocity, already oriented toward Earth.”
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